


five years

by sehoprint



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Break Up, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Byun Baekhyun/Park Chanyeol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-13 04:03:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18461102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sehoprint/pseuds/sehoprint
Summary: five years minseok lived without jongdae. 60 months, 260 weeks, 1,825 days, 43,800 hours, 2,628,000 minutes, and 157,680,000 seconds jongdae was no longer by his side.





	five years

 

 

Day one was the hardest. This was solely because he kept believing that Jongdae would come back. It was the hardest twenty four hours of his life to wake up to a cold bed(which wasn’t uncommon those days) and go to back to sleep in one too(which was uncommon, as Jongdae would stumble back to bed and wake him up with a kiss on his cheek before spooning him back to sleep).

 

He was worried, as one would be if their boyfriend was missing, but then he started thinking.

 

_What if Jongdae left for a reason? What if he’s gone simply because he wants to be?_

 

Then he shook the thought away, firmly believe that Jongdae would come back. Maybe he was held up at work, or an emergency popped up, and he had to go somewhere.

 

But he would tell Minseok. No matter how abrupt or scary it was, Jongdae told Minseok _everything_.

 

So he shut down his overactive brain and tried to catch some shut-eye as he’d been around cleaning the house in a worry the whole day.

 

With a final thought about Jongdae, he closed his eyes and hoped that when he woke up, it would be to his boyfriend wrapped around his body.

 

~

 

After a week with no calls or texts from Jongdae, just in and out calls from their mutual friends(which happened to be most) asking whether or not they had seen the younger boy at all. He blinked and tried his hardest to keep the sound of his cries hidden at every “No, sorry.” that he got.

 

He didn’t really eat or sleep, just incase Jongdae would come back and found him asleep and left again, and it just didn’t feel right to eat without the other boy at his side, without the warmth of his hand on his thigh, or without the loudness of his whines and jokes.

 

So he just sat around the house, trying his best to keep himself and the house clean, so Jongdae would come back to the best, and the best only.

 

~

 

After a month, he started to loose hope. There was no way his (ex?)boyfriend was coming back now.

 

He stopped leaving the door to their shared apartment open, forced himself to eat in silence(but on days when the silence was the loudest, he’d turn up the radio to overpower it), and to get at least four hours of sleep before heading off to sit in the park.

 

The park had become his new best friend, but also his new enemy. It was calm and serene, yet alive and bustling with life, which allowed Minseok to think which, could’ve been good or bad, depending on the day. The bad thing though, was that the park was the place where the gone boy took him out on his first day after confessing to him.

 

This made it hard to concentrate on anything, but made him aware of everything, may it be his feelings and emotions, his surroundings, and even his own different breathing patterns.

 

There, he sat and thought about how Jongdae could just up and leave him like not only him as a person or lover, but also how _they_ as a relationship were nothing to him.

 

It hurt how the younger could just throw away their four years together.

 

That’s what hurt him the most.

 

~

 

Even after a year, the way he kept track of the days was no longer days since the start of time, but since the end of him and Jongdae.

 

That’s why he was sat on the same couch where he and Jongdae had once made out like prepubescent teens and would’ve went further if Baekhyun hadn’t knocked on the door(they finished their business right after Baekhyun went home again to his boyfriend Chanyeol). He sat right there on that couch, crisscross applesauce like a fucking toddler because that’s what he was acting like.

 

He was crying and screaming while the fire in his lungs burned from the inside out, setting his skin and heart aflame. He clawed at the heavy sweatshirt weighing down own his body. It was previously owned by Jongdae and still smelt like him is he buried his nose in it deeply enough.

 

His nails scratched at his arms and hair, unable contain his shaking, but he stayed on that same couch that brought back so many fucking memories.

 

He didn’t get up to throw shit around, but scratched the couch a bit to release some anger and sadness.

 

“Why?!” he screamed to the emptiness in his heart Jongdae left when he took a piece of him.

 

“Why, Jongdae?! Why did you leave me?” his voice thinned out at the end of his second question and he sobbed even harder.

 

“You fucking coward! I loved you, and all you did was up and leave! You threw our four years together away, and I’m not even sad anymore, I’m angry as fuck.”

 

“I’m angry because you decided that I wasn’t enough for you anymore, and left without so much as a note! You decided to end us without letting me know. You took everything into your own ands and dropped it all on me when you decided you were done, and it was way to late for me to catch it, so I have to pick up the broken pieces!” he started yelling again, and hit his flat palms against the couch multiple times.

 

He knew he was throwing a tantrum, but he’d kept it all inside and was numb for a year, and it was all bubbling out.

 

“I hate you so much because you didn’t let me love you.”

 

~

 

The next day, Minseok woke up on the dark burgundy couch, tears dried on his face and a crick in his neck. There was no sign of anything happening in the house except for the few scratches on the pillows that Minseok broke down on.

 

“Aish...” he mumbled, cracking his neck.

 

He stood up at the sound of multiple knocks on his door. He wondered who it was as he walked to the door.

 

He opened it, and saw Baekhyun, Kyungsoo, and Junmyeon fidgeting nervously at his front door.

 

“Baby...” Baekhyun murmured, taking Minseok in his hold, Kyungsoo and Junmyeon following them inside the apartment.

 

“Baekhyun-ah! I’m your hyung.” he said, addressing the way the younger called him ‘Baby’.

 

“Yeah, yeah, we know _hyung_.” Kyungsoo teased, rushing forward into the hug.

 

Junmyeon looked on, until Minseok looked at him, urging him to join, and the younger shrugged before diving in.

 

The hug ended and they all pulled away from each other, and Baekhyun gave Minseok a look.

 

“Isn’t that Jongdae’s sweater?” he questioned, treading softly on the sore subject.

 

Minseok nodded and looked down, not enjoying all of the eyes on him. “Yeah, it is,” he answered. “B-but... It was just a hard day yesterday, and I- I just needed the comfort because he’s gone, and his things are all I have left of him.”

 

He didn’t mean to tear up at his own little impromptu speech, but when he looked up and saw the three looking at him in a mixture of worry and pity, he broke down.

 

His knees gave out, and like all of the dramas he’d watched with Jongdae and without Jongdae, he sobbed.

 

He sobbed and sobbed and let the younger boys hold him on the floor while he cried and cried about how much he missed his boyfriend.

 

And they agreed, saying they missed him too, agreed with how unfair it was to drop all of the burden on Minseok.

 

The three boys held him until he could get up on his own, saying that they’ll be there every step of the way.

 

~

 

The seconds blended into minutes which then blended into hours, then days, then weeks, then months, and essentially years.

 

It was five years later and Minseok hadn’t necessarily forgotten about or stopped loving Jongdae, but he just moved on.

 

He learned to live with that hole in his heart, and soon enough, it felt normal.

 

Sure, it was a sad way to live, to let your (ex? Minseok still wasn’t sure about that even though it’s been five years)boyfriend walk away with a piece that of you and to never try to obtain it back, to give up like that, but call Minseok sad. No matter how numb he could be, he was still sad, and that, essentially was the same thing.

 

But right then, he had decided, if he could make it five years without Jongdae, why not make it ten, then twenty, then thirty, then fifty, and he’ll be done before he knew it.

 

He’ll live his life as an old man, looking back on the boy he loved that left him, but smile. Something he hadn’t done until a few months after the one year anniversary of Jongdae’s departure, and sure, he’ll wonder too.

 

He’ll wonder about just where he went, why he left, and just why he did without anything to comfort Minseok? He’ll wonder about those unanswered questions that will be left unanswered.

 

But he won’t cry. Not anymore, because sure, Jongdae had taken his heart, but not his happiness, and it was such a shame that he just realised this while walking on a busy sidewalk in Seoul, but at least he realised.

 

He realised that he didn’t have to be sad, and even though it took him five years, he realised.

 

He doesn’t have to live his life counting the days without Jongdae(1,825, if you were wondering. Sorry, it’s a habit by now).

 

Life from now on wouldn’t be days since Jongdae left home, but days since Jongdae left his heart, or days since Jongdae took my happiness, but days since he took it back, all starting that day.

**Author's Note:**

> idk but i felt like leaving jongdae out physically made more sense with this. it just felt more realistic and emotional to just go along with minseok's thoughts and feelings, which is also why i didn't explain why he left, cause it's just one of those things that make it more realistic cause you won't always get an explanation. i also felt like making him come back in the end but,, let's be honest, it was five years later and it just wasn't realistic.
> 
> i also tagged it as angst with a happy ending because it isn't necessarily sad because he learns to move on as the person he was before he met jongdae and with new hope and happiness, so i'd call that happy :)


End file.
